The arrest of Val Swain and Emily Apple is the latest exposure of the disgracefully heavy-handed and repressive treatment of peaceful, harmless people who dared to question the way the police conduct themselves.
It is certainly true that NATO played a critical role in disrupting the heavy weapons capability of the repressive Libyan regime and blocking its fuel and ammunition supplies through massive airstrikes and by providing armaments and logistical support for the rebels.
Heavy promoter methylation is clearly repressive, whereas weak promoter methylation is associated with highly variable gene expression patterns.
But then, it was always this way with repressive regimes: the more heavy-handed they get in trying to establish orderly obedience, the more they're inclined to see sedition everywhere in a flippant tweet, an insufficiently deferential glare, a t-shirt.
Syria's repressive leadership came under unexpectedly heavy pressure on Thursday as thousands of angry demonstrators massed again in the southern city of Dara'a, demanding democratic reform and protesting the deaths of more than a dozen people shot by security forces in the past week.
The Kremlin has been trying to stamp out resistance there since the breakup of the Soviet Union — through two civil wars, a heavy-handed police presence, power-sharing with repressive local elites and huge cash transfers, among other tactics.
Few living under a repressive regime can afford to pay the heavy price for speaking out against injustice, so most people choose to stay silent.
Heavy censorship was just one of a range of repressive instruments of state available to him that also included a large spy network.
As to the question of freedom of speech overall, he said, "Our media landscape is improving, but we are doing it gradually".The United States made note of the government's heavy hand in May, when it lumped Tunisia along with repressive states like China, Cuba and Burma in terms of press freedom.
The government, which was under the rule of Gen. Gnassingbé Eyadéma for almost 40 years, operated with a heavy hand, making Togo, in West Africa, one of the continent's most closed and repressive nations.
